The US Navy has awarded a contract to General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems (GD ADS) to build Type-3 advanced mission computers (AMC) for deployment in the F/A-18 E/A-18G Super Hornet aircraft.

Under the $16m contract, GD will be responsible for the production, development, testing and delivery of the Type-3 AMCs at its Bloomington facility in Minnesota, US. They will be supplied to the US Navy and Australia.

General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems Sensors and Processing senior director John van Dyke said: "By leveraging commercial off-the-shelf technologies and an open architecture, we are helping the navy keep lifecycle costs down, while strengthening mission-critical performance capabilities for the flight crew.

"We are helping the navy keep lifecycle costs down, while strengthening mission-critical performance capabilities for the flight crew."

"We look forward to continuing to provide the navy with our cost-effective, low-risk solution that addresses obsolescence, increases flexibility and helps the nation and its allies advance their mission."

The Type-3 AMC is a ruggedised, high-performance, high-reliability mission and display-processing system, designed to process data flows at a greater speed from the advanced sensor technologies.

The AMC is the nerve centre of the Super Hornet and provides situational awareness and combat systems control to the flight crew.

Aimed at operating in extreme environmental conditions, the AMCs are capable of processing high-speed data rates from aircraft sensors and can perform general purpose, input / output, video, voice and graphics processing.

The F/A-18 AMC can be configured to any operating environment and provides the navy with situational awareness and combat systems control.

The contract is expected to be completed by March 2016.

Defence Technology